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Magnetic helicity plays a tremendously important role when it is different from zero on average. Most notably, it leads to the phenomenon of an inverse cascade. Here, we consider decaying magnetohydrodynamic turbulence as well as some less common examples of magnetic evolution under the Hall effect and ambipolar diffusion, as well as cases in which the magnetic field evolution is constrained by the presence of an asymmetry in the number density of chiral fermions, whose spin is systematically either aligned or anti-aligned with its momentum. In all those cases, there is a new conserved quantity: the Hosking integral. We present quantitative scaling results for the magnetic integral scale as well as the magnetic energy density and its spectrum. We also compare with cases were also a magnetic version of the Saffman integral is initially finite.

Hydrodynamic and magnetohydrodynamic turbulence in the early Universe can drive gravitational waves (GWs) and imprint their spectrum onto that of GWs, which might still be observable today. We study the production of the GW background from freely decaying magnetohydrodynamic turbulence from helical and nonhelical initial magnetic fields. To understand the produced GW spectra, we develop a simple model on the basis of the evolution of the magnetic stress tensor. We find that the GW spectra obtained in this model reproduce those obtained in numerical simulations if we consider the detailed time evolution of the low-frequency tail of the stress spectrum from numerical simulations. We also show that the shapes of the produced GW frequency spectra are different for helical and nonhelical cases for the same initial magnetic energy spectra. Such differences can help distinguish helical and nonhelical initial magnetic fields from a polarized background of GWs -- especially when the expected circular polarization cannot be detected directly., 12 pages, 12 figures, 3 tables, Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D

Small-scale dynamos play important roles in modern astrophysics, especially on Galactic and extragalactic scales. Owing to dynamo action, purely hydrodynamic Kolmogorov turbulence hardly exists and is often replaced by hydromagnetic turbulence. Understanding the size of dissipative magnetic structures is important in estimating the time scale of Galactic scintillation and other observational and theoretical aspects of interstellar and intergalactic small-scale dynamos. Here we show that, during the kinematic phase of the small-scale dynamo, the cutoff wavenumber of the magnetic energy spectra scales as expected for large magnetic Prandtl numbers, but continues in the same way also for moderately small values - contrary to what is expected. For a critical magnetic Prandtl number of about 0.3, the dissipative and resistive cutoffs are found to occur at the same wavenumber. In the nonlinearly saturated regime, the critical magnetic Prandtl number becomes unity. The cutoff scale now has a shallower scaling with magnetic Prandtl number below a value of about three, and a steeper one otherwise compared to the kinematic regime., 9 pages, 12 figures, 4 tables, submitted to MNRAS, revised version

The magnetic fields in galaxy clusters and probably also in the interstellar medium are believed to be generated by a small-scale dynamo. Theoretically, during its kinematic stage, it is characterized by a Kazantsev spectrum, which peaks at the resistive scale. It is only slightly shallower than the Saffman spectrum that is expected for random and causally connected magnetic fields. Causally disconnected fields have the even steeper Batchelor spectrum. Here we show that all three spectra are present in the small-scale dynamo. During the kinematic stage, the Batchelor spectrum occurs on scales larger than the energy-carrying scale of the turbulence, and the Kazantsev spectrum on smaller scales within the inertial range of the turbulence -- even for a magnetic Prandtl number of unity. In the saturated state, the dynamo develops a Saffman spectrum on large scales, suggestive of the build-up of long-range correlations. At large magnetic Prandtl numbers, elongated structures are seen in synthetic synchrotron emission maps showing the parity-even E polarization. We also observe a significant excess in the E polarization over the parity-odd B polarization at subresistive scales, and a deficiency at larger scales. This finding is at odds with the observed excess in the Galactic microwave foreground emission, which is believed to be associated with larger scales. The E and B polarizations may be highly non-Gaussian and skewed in the kinematic regime of the dynamo. For dust emission, however, the polarized emission is always nearly Gaussian, and the excess in the E polarization is much weaker., 14 pages, 25 figures, 5 tables, MNRAS, in press

The existence of an exponential growth phase during early stages of a pandemic is often taken for granted. However, for the 2019 novel coronavirus epidemic, the early exponential phase lasted only for about six days, while the quadratic growth prevailed for forty days until it spread to other countries and continued, again quadratically, but with a larger coefficient. Here we show that this rapid phase is followed by a subsequent slow-down where the coefficient is reduced to almost the original value at the outbreak. This can be explained by the merging of previously disconnected sites that occurred after the disease jumped (nonlocally) to a relatively small number of separated sites. Subsequent variations in the slope with continued growth can qualitatively be explained as a result of reinfections and changes in their rate. We demonstrate that the observed behavior can be described by a standard epidemiological model with spatial extent and reinfections included. Time-dependent changes in the spatial diffusion coefficient can also model corresponding variations in the slope., 11 pages, 10 figures, 1 table

Solar flares create adverse space weather impacting space- and Earth-based technologies. However, the difficulty of forecasting flares, and by extension severe space weather, is accentuated by the lack of any unique flare trigger or a single physical pathway. Studies indicate that multiple physical properties contribute to active region flare potential, compounding the challenge. Recent developments in machine learning (ML) have enabled analysis of higher-dimensional data leading to increasingly better flare forecasting techniques. However, consensus on high-performing flare predictors remains elusive. In the most comprehensive study to date, we conduct a comparative analysis of four popular ML techniques (k nearest neighbors, logistic regression, random forest classifier, and support vector machine) by training these on magnetic parameters obtained from the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory for the entirety of solar cycle 24. We demonstrate that the logistic regression and support vector machine algorithms perform extremely well in forecasting active region flaring potential. The logistic regression algorithm returns the highest true skill score of 0.967 ± 0.018, possibly the highest classification performance achieved with any strictly parametric study. From a comparative assessment, we establish that magnetic properties like total current helicity, total vertical current density, total unsigned flux, R_VALUE, and total absolute twist are the top-performing flare indicators. We also introduce and analyze two new performance metrics, namely, severe and clear space weather indicators. Our analysis constrains the most successful ML algorithms and identifies physical parameters that contribute most to active region flare productivity.

The Hosking integral, which characterizes magnetic helicity fluctuations in subvolumes, is known to govern the decay of magnetically dominated turbulence. Here we show that, when the evolution of the magnetic field is controlled by the motion of electrons only, as in neutron star crusts, the decay of the magnetic field is still controlled by the Hosking integral, but now it has effectively different dimensions than in ordinary magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence. This causes the correlation length to increase with time $t$ like $t^{4/13}$ instead of $t^{4/9}$ in MHD. The magnetic energy density decreases like $t^{-10/13}$, which is slower than in MHD, where it decays like $t^{-10/9}$. These new analytic results agree with earlier numerical simulations for the nonhelical Hall cascade., Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables

Primordial magnetic fields (PMFs) are possible candidates for explaining the observed magnetic fields in galaxy clusters. Two competing scenarios of primordial magnetogenesis have been discussed in the literature: inflationary and phase-transitional. We study the amplification of both large- and small-scale correlated magnetic fields, corresponding to inflation- and phase transition-generated PMFs, in a massive galaxy cluster. We employ high-resolution magnetohydrodynamic cosmological zoom-in simulations to resolve the turbulent motions in the intracluster medium. We find that the turbulent amplification is more efficient for the large-scale inflationary models, while the phase transition-generated seed fields show moderate growth. The differences between the models are imprinted on the spectral characteristics of the field (such as the amplitude and the shape of the magnetic power spectrum) and therefore on the final correlation length. We find a one order of magnitude difference between the final strengths of the inflation- and phase transition-generated magnetic fields, and a factor of 1.5 difference between their final coherence scales. Thus, the final configuration of the magnetic field retains information about the PMF generation scenarios. Our findings have implications for future extragalactic Faraday rotation surveys with the possibility of distinguishing between different magnetogenesis scenarios., Comment: 21 pages, 13 figures, comments welcome

We revisit the big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) limits on primordial magnetic fields and/or turbulent motions accounting for the decaying nature of turbulent sources between the time of generation and BBN. This leads to larger estimates for the gravitational wave (GW) signal than previously expected. We address the detection prospects through space-based interferometers (for GWs generated around the electroweak energy scale) as well as pulsar timing arrays and astrometric missions (for GWs generated around the quantum chromodynamics energy scale)., 9 pages; 6 figures; discussions and references added; typos fixed; conclusions unchanged

We study the effects of ambipolar diffusion (AD) on hydromagnetic turbulence. In most of the cases, we use the single fluid approximation where the drift velocity between charged and neutral particles is proportional to the Lorentz force. In two cases we also compare with the corresponding two-fluid model, where ionization and recombination are included in the continuity and momentum equations for the neutral and charged species. We consider the regime of large magnetic Prandtl number, relevant to the interstellar medium. The magnetic field properties are found to be well represented by the single fluid approximation. We quantify the effects of AD on total and spectral kinetic and magnetic energies, the Ohmic and AD dissipation rates, the statistics of the magnetic field, the current density, and the linear polarization as measured by the rotationally invariant E and B mode polarizations. We show that the kurtosis of the magnetic field decreases with increasing AD. The E mode polarization changes its skewness from positive values for small AD to negative ones for large AD. Even when AD is weak, changes in AD have a marked effect on the skewness and kurtosis of E, and only a weak effect on those of B. These results open the possibility of employing E and B mode polarizations as diagnostic tools for characterizing turbulent properties of the interstellar medium., 13 pages, 13 figures, 1 table, MNRAS, in press

We discuss selected aspects regarding the magnetic field evolution of solar-type stars. Most of the stars with activity cycles are in the range where the normalized chromospheric Calcium emission increases linearly with the inverse Rossby number. For Rossby numbers below about a quarter of the solar value, the activity saturates and no cycles have been found. For Rossby numbers above the solar value, again no activity cycles have been found, but now the activity goes up again for a major fraction of the stars. Rapidly rotating stars show nonaxisymmetric large-scale magnetic fields, but there is disagreement between models and observations regarding the actual value of the Rossby number where this happens. We also discuss the prospects of detecting the sign of magnetic helicity using various linear polarization techniques both at the stellar surface using the parity-odd contribution to linear polarization and above the surface using Faraday rotation., 13 pages, 3 figures, 3 tables, proceedings of IAU symposium 354, Solar and Stellar Magnetic Fields: Origins and Manifestations

In relativistic magnetized plasmas, asymmetry in the number densities of left- and right-handed fermions, i.e., a non-zero chiral chemical potential mu_5, leads to an electric current along the magnetic field. This causes a chiral dynamo instability for a uniform mu_5, but our simulations reveal a dynamo even for fluctuating mu_5 with zero mean. It produces magnetically-dominated turbulence and generates mean magnetic fields via the magnetic alpha effect. Eventually, a universal scale-invariant k^(-1) spectrum of mu_5 and a k^(-3) magnetic spectrum are formed independently of the initial condition., 6 pages, 4 figures, published in Phys. Rev. Lett

We study the dynamics of magnetic fields in chiral magnetohydrodynamics, which takes into account the effects of an additional electric current related to the chiral magnetic effect in high energy plasmas. We perform direct numerical simulations, considering weak seed magnetic fields and inhomogeneities of the chiral chemical potential mu_5 with a zero mean. We demonstrate that a small-scale chiral dynamo can occur in such plasmas if fluctuations of mu_5 are correlated on length scales that are much larger than the scale on which the dynamo growth rate reaches its maximum. Magnetic fluctuations grow by many orders of magnitude due to the small-scale chiral dynamo instability. Once the nonlinear backreaction of the generated magnetic field on fluctuations of mu_5 sets in, the ratio of these scales decreases and the dynamo saturates. When magnetic fluctuations grow sufficiently to drive turbulence via the Lorentz force before reaching maximum field strength, an additional mean-field dynamo phase is identified. The mean magnetic field grows on a scale that is larger than the integral scale of turbulence after the amplification of the fluctuating component saturates. The growth rate of the mean magnetic field is caused by a magnetic alpha effect that is proportional to the current helicity. With the onset of turbulence, the power spectrum of mu_5 develops a universal k^(-1) scaling independently of its initial shape, while the magnetic energy spectrum approaches a k^(-3) scaling., 22 pages, 22 figures

Using numerical simulations of helical inflationary magnetogenesis in a low reheating temperature scenario, we show that the magnetic energy spectrum is strongly peaked at a particular wavenumber that depends on the reheating temperature. Gravitational waves (GWs) are produced at frequencies between 3 nHz and 50 mHz for reheating temperatures between 150 MeV and 3x10^5 GeV, respectively. At and below the peak frequency, the stress spectrum is always found to be that of white noise. This implies a linear increase of GW energy per logarithmic wavenumber interval, instead of a cubic one, as previously thought. Both in the helical and nonhelical cases, the GW spectrum is followed by a sharp drop for frequencies above the respective peak frequency. In this magnetogenesis scenario, the presence of a helical term extends the peak of the GW spectrum and therefore also the position of the aforementioned drop toward larger frequencies compared to the case without helicity. This might make a difference in it being detectable with space interferometers. The efficiency of GW production is found to be almost the same as in the nonhelical case, and independent of the reheating temperature, provided the electromagnetic energy at the end of reheating is fixed to be a certain fraction of the radiation energy density. Also, contrary to the case without helicity, the electric energy is now less than the magnetic energy during reheating. The fractional circular polarization is found to be nearly hundred per cent in a certain range below the peak frequency range., 16 pages, 8 figures, 4 tables, submitted to ApJ

We use direct numerical simulations of decaying primordial hydromagnetic turbulence with helicity to compute the resulting gravitational wave (GW) production and its degree of circular polarization. We find a clear dependence of the polarization of the resulting GWs on the fractional helicity of the turbulent source and we show that driven magnetic fields produce GWs more efficiently than magnetic fields that are initially present, leading to larger spectral amplitudes. The helicity does not have a huge impact on the maximum spectral amplitude in any of the two types of turbulence considered. However, the GW spectrum at wave numbers away from the peak becomes smaller for larger values of the magnetic fractional helicity. The degree of circular polarization approaches zero at frequencies below the peak, and reaches its maximum at the peak. At higher frequencies, it stays finite if the magnetic field is initially present, and it approaches zero if it is driven. We predict that the spectral peak of the GW signal can be detected by LISA if the turbulent energy density is at least $\sim 3\%$ of the radiation energy density, and the characteristic scale is a hundredth of the horizon at the electroweak scale. We show that the resulting GW polarization is unlikely to be detectable by the anisotropies induced by our proper motion in the dipole response function of LISA. Such signals can, however, be detectable by cross-correlating data from the LISA-Taiji network for turbulent energy densities of $\sim 5\%$, and fractional helicity of 0.5 to 1. Second-generation space-based GW detectors, such as BBO and DECIGO, would allow for the detection of a larger range of the GW spectrum and smaller amplitudes of the magnetic field., 49 pages, 18 figures, 1 table, accepted in JCAP

We present three-dimensional direct numerical simulations of the production of magnetic fields and gravitational waves (GWs) in the early Universe during a low energy scale matter-dominated post-inflationary reheating era, and during the early subsequent radiative era, which is strongly turbulent. The parameters of the model are determined such that it avoids a number of known physical problems and produces magnetic energy densities between 0.2% and 2% of the critical energy density at the end of reheating. During the subsequent development of a turbulent magnetohydrodynamic cascade, magnetic fields and GWs develop a spectrum that extends to higher frequencies in the millihertz (nanohertz) range for models with reheating temperatures of around 100 GeV (150 MeV) at the beginning of the radiation-dominated era. However, even though the turbulent cascade is fully developed, the GW spectrum shows a sharp drop for frequencies above the peak value. This suggests that the turbulence is less efficient in driving GWs than previously thought. The peaks of the resulting GW spectra may well be in the range accessible to space interferometers, pulsar timing arrays, and other facilities., 20 pages, 15 figures, 4 tables, Astrophys. J. 920, 26 (2021)

Clustering of inertial particles is important for many types of astrophysical and geophysical turbulence, but it has been studied predominately for incompressible flows. Here we study compressible flows and compare clustering in both compressively (irrotationally) and vortically (solenoidally) forced turbulence. Vortically and compressively forced flows are driven stochastically either by solenoidal waves or by circular expansion waves, respectively. For compressively forced flows, the power spectrum of the density of inertial particles is a useful tool for displaying particle clustering relative to the fluid density enhancement. Power spectra are shown to be particularly sensitive for studying large-scale particle clustering, while conventional tools such as radial distribution functions are more suitable for studying small-scale clustering. Our primary finding is that particle clustering through shock interaction is particularly prominent in turbulence driven by spherical expansion waves. It manifests itself through a double-peaked distribution of spectral power as a function of Stokes number. The two peaks are associated with two distinct clustering mechanisms; shock interaction for smaller Stokes numbers and the centrifugal sling effect for larger values. The clustering of inertial particles is associated with the formation of caustics. Such caustics can only be captured in the Lagrangian description, which allows us to assess the relative importance of caustics in vortically and compressively forced turbulence. We show that the statistical noise resulting from the limited number of particles in the Lagrangian description can be removed from the particle power spectra, allowing us a more detailed comparison of the residual spectra. We focus on the Epstein drag law relevant for rarefied gases, but show that our findings apply also to the usual Stokes drag., 33 pages, 25 figures, 5 tables, J. Fluid Mech., in press

We consider a generic dispersive massive gravity theory and numerically study its resulting modified energy and strain spectra of tensor gravitational waves (GWs) sourced by (i) fully developed turbulence during the electroweak phase transition (EWPT) and (ii) forced hydromagnetic turbulence during the QCD phase transition (QCDPT). The GW spectra are then computed in both spatial and temporal Fourier domains. We find, from the spatial spectra, that the slope modifications are weakly dependent on the eddy size at QCDPT, and, from the temporal spectra, that the modifications are pronounced in the $1$--$10{\rm nHz}$ range -- the sensitivity range of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) -- for a graviton mass $m_{\rm g}$ in the range $2\times10^{-23}{\rm eV}\lesssim m_{\rm g}c^2\lesssim7\times10^{-22}{\rm eV}$., 15 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables, comments welcome

This study aimed to identify an appropriate simple mathematical model to fit the number of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases at the national level for the early portion of the pandemic, before significant public health interventions could be enacted. The total number of cases for the COVID-19 epidemic over time in 28 countries was analysed and fit to several simple rate models. The resulting model parameters were used to extrapolate projections for more recent data. While the Gompertz growth model (mean R2 = 0.998) best fit the current data, uncertainties in the eventual case limit introduced significant model errors. However, the quadratic rate model (mean R2 = 0.992) fit the current data best for 25 (89%) countries as determined by R2 values of the remaining models. Projection to the future using the simple quadratic model accurately forecast the number of future total number of cases 50% of the time up to 10 days in advance. Extrapolation to the future with the simple exponential model significantly overpredicted the total number of future cases. These results demonstrate that accurate future predictions of the case load in a given country can be made using this very simple model.

In many astrophysical environments, self-gravity can generate kinetic energy, which, in principle, is available for driving dynamo action. Using direct numerical simulations, we show that in unstirred self-gravitating subsonic turbulence with helicity and a magnetic Prandtl number of unity, there is a critical magnetic Reynolds number of about 25 above which the work done against the Lorentz force exceeds the Ohmic dissipation. The collapse itself drives predominantly irrotational motions that cannot be responsible for dynamo action. We find that, with a weak magnetic field, one-third of the work done by the gravitational force goes into compressional heating and the remaining two-thirds go first into kinetic energy of the turbulence before a fraction of it is converted further into magnetic and finally thermal energies. Close to the collapse, however, these fractions change toward 1/4 and 3/4 for compressional heating and kinetic energy, respectively. When the magnetic field is strong, the compressional heating fraction is unchanged. Out of the remaining kinetic energy, one quarter goes directly into magnetic energy via work against the Lorentz force. The fraction of vortical motions diminishes in favor of compressive motions that are almost exclusively driven by the Jeans instability. For an initially uniform magnetic field, field amplification at scales larger than those of the initial turbulence are driven by tangling., Comment: 17 pages, 19 figures, 1 table, resubmitted to MNRAS

We study the gravitational wave (GW) signal sourced by primordial turbulence that is assumed to be present at cosmological phase transitions like the electroweak and quantum chromodynamics phase transitions. We consider various models of primordial turbulence, such as those with and without helicity, purely hydrodynamical turbulence induced by fluid motions, and magnetohydrodynamic turbulence whose energy can be dominated either by kinetic or magnetic energy, depending on the nature of the turbulence. We also study circularly polarized GWs generated by parity violating sources such as helical turbulence. Our ultimate goal is to determine the efficiency of GW production through different classes of turbulence. We find that the GW energy and strain tend to be large for acoustic or irrotational turbulence, even though its tensor mode amplitude is relatively small at most wave numbers. Only at very small wave numbers is the spectral tensor mode significant, which might explain the efficient GW production in that case., Comment: 25 pages, 8 figures

We perform direct numerical simulations to compute the net circular polarization of gravitational waves from helical (chiral) turbulent sources in the early Universe for a variety of initial conditions, including driven (stationary) and decaying turbulence. We investigate the resulting gravitational wave signal assuming different turbulent geneses such as magnetically or kinetically driven cases. Under realistic physical conditions in the early Universe we compute numerically the wave number-dependent polarization degree of the gravitational waves. We find that the spectral polarization degree strongly depends on the initial conditions. The peak of the spectral polarization degree occurs at twice the typical wavenumber of the source, as expected, and for fully helical decaying turbulence, it reaches its maximum of nearly 100\% {\it only} at the peak. We determine the temporal evolution of the turbulent sources as well as the resulting gravitational waves, showing that the dominant contribution to their spectral energy density happens shortly after the activation of the source. Only through an artificially prolonged decay of the turbulence can further increase of the gravitational wave amplitude be achieved. We estimate the detection prospects for the net polarization, arguing that its detection contains {\it clean} information (including the generation mechanisms, time, and strength) about the sources of possible parity violations in the early Universe., Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures; discussions added; references updated and added; conclusions unchanged; Phys. Rev. Research in press

We perform numerical simulations of gravitational waves (GWs) induced by hydrodynamic and hydromagnetic turbulent sources that might have been present at cosmological quantum chromodynamic (QCD) phase transitions. For turbulent energies of about 4% of the radiation energy density, the typical scale of such motions may have been a sizable fraction of the Hubble scale at that time. The resulting GWs are found to have an energy fraction of about $10^{-9}$ of the critical energy density in the nHz range today and may already have been observed by the NANOGrav collaboration. This is further made possible by our findings of shallower spectra proportional to the square root of the frequency for nonhelical hydromagnetic turbulence. This implies more power at low frequencies than for the steeper spectra previously anticipated. The behavior toward higher frequencies depends strongly on the nature of the turbulence. For vortical hydrodynamic and hydromagnetic turbulence, there is a sharp drop of spectral GW energy by up to five orders of magnitude in the presence of helicity, and somewhat less in the absence of helicity. For acoustic hydrodynamic turbulence, the sharp drop is replaced by a power law decay, albeit with a rather steep slope. Our study supports earlier findings of a quadratic scaling of the GW energy with the magnetic energy of the turbulence and inverse quadratic scaling with the peak frequency, which leads to larger GW energies under QCD conditions., Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables; page numbers, figure captions, references updated and added; discussions expanded; results unchanged and PRD accepted

Motivated by a scenario of magnetogenesis in which a homogeneous magnetic field is generated during inflation, we study the magnetohydrodynamic evolution of the primordial plasma motions for two kinds of initial conditions -- (i) a spatially homogeneous field with an unlimited correlation length, and (ii) a zero flux scale-invariant statistically homogeneous magnetic field. In both cases, we apply, for a short initial time interval, monochromatic forcing at a certain wave number so that the correlation length is finite, but much smaller than the typical length scale of turbulence. In particular, we investigate the decay of nonhelical and helical hydromagnetic turbulence. We show that, in the presence of a homogeneous magnetic field, the decay of helical and nonhelical small-scale fields can occur rapidly. This is a special property of a system with a perfectly homogeneous magnetic field, which is sometimes considered as a local approximation to a slowly varying background field. It can never change and acts as an imposed magnetic field. This is in a sharp contrast to the case of a statistically homogeneous magnetic field, where we recover familiar decay properties: a much slower decay of magnetic energy and a faster growth of the correlation length, especially in the case with magnetic felicity. The result suggests that a homogeneous magnetic field, if generated during inflation, should persist under the influence of small-scale fields and could be the origin of the large-scale magnetic field in the Universe., 16 pages, 7 figures, 1 table. Journal version

We consider the effect of a subadiabatic layer at the base of the convection zone on convection itself and the associated large-scale dynamos in spherical wedge geometry. We use a heat conduction prescription based on the Kramers opacity law which allows the depth of the convection zone to dynamically adapt to changes in the physical characteristics such as rotation rate and magnetic fields. We find that the convective heat transport is strongly concentrated toward the equatorial and polar regions in the cases without a substantial radiative layer below the convection zone. The presence of a stable layer below the convection zone significantly reduces the anisotropy of radial enthalpy transport. Furthermore, the dynamo solutions are sensitive to subtle changes in the convection zone structure. We find that the kinetic helicity changes sign in the deeper parts of the convection zone at high latitudes in all runs. This region expands progressively toward the equator in runs with a thicker stably stratified layer., 32 pages, 18 figures, accepted to GAFD Special issue on 'Recent Developments in Natural Dynamos'

The large-scale magnetic field of the Milky Way is thought to be created by an alpha-Omega dynamo, which implies that it should have opposite handedness North and South of the Galactic midplane. Here we attempt to detect a variation in handedness using polarization data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. Previous analyzes of the parity-even and parity-odd parts of linear polarization of the global dust and synchrotron emission have focused on quadratic correlations in spectral space of, and between, these two components. Here, by contrast, we analyze the parity-odd polarization itself and show that it has, on average, opposite signs in Northern and Southern Galactic hemispheres. Comparison with a Galactic mean-field dynamo model shows broad qualitative agreement and reveals that the sign of the observed hemispheric dependence of the azimuthally averaged parity-odd polarization is not determined by the sign of alpha, but by the sense of differential rotation., 7 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, submitted to ApJL

Primordial magnetic fields could explain the large-scale magnetic fields present in the Universe. Inflation and phase transitions in the early Universe could give rise to such fields with unique characteristics. We investigate the magneto-hydrodynamic evolution of these magnetogenesis scenarios with cosmological simulations. We evolve inflation-generated magnetic fields either as (i) uniform (homogeneous) or as (ii) scale-invariant stochastic fields, and phase transition-generated ones either as (iii) helical or as (iv) non-helical fields from the radiation-dominated epoch. We find that the final distribution of magnetic fields in the simulated cosmic web shows a dependence on the initial strength and the topology of the seed field. Thus, the observed field configuration retains information on the initial conditions at the moment of the field generation. If detected, primordial magnetic field observations would open a new window for indirect probes of the early universe. The differences between the competing models are revealed on the scale of galaxy clusters, bridges, as well as filaments and voids. The distinctive spectral evolution of different seed fields produces imprints on the correlation length today. We discuss how the differences between rotation measures from highly ionized regions can potentially be probed with forthcoming surveys., 28 pages, 17 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

Much work on turbulent three-dimensional dynamos has been done using triply periodic domains, in which there are no magnetic helicity fluxes. Here, we present simulations where the turbulent intens ...

Radiation transport plays important roles in stellar atmospheres, but the effects of turbulence are being obscured by other effects such as stratification. Using radiative hydrodynamic simulations of forced turbulence, we determine the decay rates of sinusoidal large-scale temperature perturbations of different wavenumbers in the optically thick and thin regimes. Increasing the wavenumber increases the rate of decay in both regimes, but this effect is much weaker than for the usual turbulent diffusion of passive scalars, where the increase is quadratic for small wavenumbers. The turbulent decay is well described by an enhanced Newtonian cooling process in the optically thin limit, which is found to show a weak increase proportional to the square root of the wavenumber. In the optically thick limit, the increase in turbulent decay is somewhat steeper for wavenumbers below the energy-carrying wavenumber of the turbulence, but levels off toward larger wavenumbers. In the presence of turbulence, the typical cooling time is comparable to the turbulent turnover time. We observe that the temperature takes a long time to reach equilibrium in both the optically thin and thick cases, but in the former, the temperature retains smaller scale structures for longer., Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, 1 table, Physics of Fluids